Box Office Update 11/16-11/18: Beowulf Tears Through the Competition

This week's number one film is none other than Robert Zemeckis' animated legend Beowulf. The epic poem adaptation became the widest digital 3D release thus far, and if this is an example of what is to come, the future looks bright. If the early success of Beowulf isn't exciting enough, Dreamworks has announced a three picture deal to release films in the IMAX 3D format. It will definitely be interesting to see how that develops, the first release, Monsters vs Aliens, due in 2009 . Anyway, Beowulf easily took the top spot and proved to be an exciting take on the ancient poem. I am curious to see how it holds up when the holiday competition really begins to kick in.

Being the holiday season we will begin to see more and more holiday themed films reach the big screen. Last week brought Fred Claus, which didn't open quite as well as I was expecting it to, but it is still a pretty good movie. Still, despite the less than expected opening it displayed a pretty strong hold, falling only 35% from its opening frame. This could indicate good legs to survive the holidays, or at least pull a respectable final gross. Its endurance will be tested in the coming week as a lot of new movies are on the horizon.

This week's holiday themed release is the Dustin Hoffman starring Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, it received a lukewarm response and failed to really make much of a mark. This opening could prove to be a bad sign as it will receive potentially strong direct competition from Disney's Enchanted, opening this week. Still, despite its lack of overall depth, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium is an entertaining fantasy in the Willy Wonka school of family entertainment and is worth spending some time with.

In it's second week of limited release, No Country for Old Men made a strong play at the box office as it leaped onto the top ten. In a mere 148 theaters it took in over $3 million to place seventh on the top ten. Miramax has to be very happy with its performance thus far. The Coen brothers movie is also one of the best of the year. See, Hollywood? Put out good films and the people will respond.

Among the returning films this week, Dan in Real Life continues to have good week to week holds, as it slipped just 27% from last week. It is not a box office burner, but it is definitely a quality film and I am glad that is finding an audience. It wasn't good for all the returning films, in particular Lions for Lambs. The Robert Redford directed, Tom Cruise starring film slipped more than 56% in its second week of release. Then there are two films that plummeted off the top ten, P2 (which is a good thriller) which fell to number 16 and Martian Child which slipped to number 24.

With the Thanksgiving holiday, most of the week's new releases will be arriving on Wednesday. Among the new competition will be Disney's Enchanted, the horror film The Mist, a video game adaptation in Hitman, the family drama August Rush, This Christmas, and No Country for Old Men expands to more theaters. Then on Friday the thriller Awake opens wide. That is a lot of new competition.

Four movies dropped off the top ten this week: The Game Plan (11), 30 Days of Night (14), P2 (19), and Martian Child (24).

This Week	Last Week	Title	Wknd Gross	Overall	Week in release
1	N	Beowulf	$27,515,871	$27,515,871	1
2	1	Bee Movie	$14,008,444	$93,570,695	3
3	2	American Gangster	$12,875,250	$100,650,615	3
4	3	Fred Claus	$11,914,323	$35,712,980	2
5	N	Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium	$9,630,085	$9,630,085	1
6	5	Dan in Real Life	$4,343,185	$36,931,806	4
7	15	No Country for Old Men	$3,075,722	$4,907,572	2
8	4	Lions for Lambs	$2,896,594	$11,584,339	2
9	6	Saw IV	$2,248,805	$61,766,718	4
10	N	Love in the Time of Cholera	$1,924,860	$1,924,860	1

Box Office Predictions Recap
Hey! My streak of the past few weeks has come to an end. I finally got the top film predicted correctly, although this one may have been a little easy to predict. I say that know, hindsight is 20/20. I am sure that I will be back to my usual bad predictions next weekend, which will be sure to be a tricky one, what with the holiday and all. Anyway, My dollar predictions were all a little high, but nothing to extreme. Even my placement was pretty good, although I was not expecting No Country for Old Men to arrive on the top ten this week.

Anyway, here is how I picked the field:

Actual	Prediction	Title	Wknd Gross	Prediction
1	1	Beowulf	$27,515,871	$34 million
2	2	Bee Movie	$14,008,444	$17.5 million
3	3	American Gangster	$12,875,250	$16 million
5	4	Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium	$9,630,085	$15.5 million
4	5	Fred Claus	$11,914,323	$11 million
6	6	Dan in Real Life	$4,343,185	$4 million
8	7	Lions for Lambs	$2,896,594	$3.5 million
9	8	Saw IV	$2,248,805	$3 million
10	9	Love in the Time of Cholera	$1,924,860	$2.5 million
11	10	The Game Plan	$1,205,957	$2 million